Improved Acquisition Strategy for Cord Area Measurement with 3D-T1W Phase Sensitive Inversion Recovery (PSIR)

Marios C. Yiannakas¹, Hugh Kearney¹, David H. Miller¹, Claudia A.M Wheeler-Kingshott¹

A new acquisition protocol is presented here which employs phase sensitive inversion recovery (PSIR) reconstruction in conjunction with a commonly used 3D T1-weighted acquisition in order to improve reproducibility of cross-sectional area measurements in the cervical cord. The new protocol is optimised in a phantom that simulates the spinal cord and subsequently evaluated in five healthy volunteers. The images obtainable with the use of the proposed acquisition protocol allow measuring the cord area with results comparable to existing protocols, with the additional benefit of highly reproducible measurements.